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Current Research on Electromagnetics at the University of Granada

Two important visitors came to the Institute to talk about recent research carried out by the well-known Group at the University of Granada working on Electromagnetics. They were Professors Amelia Rubio Bretones and Rafael Gomez-Martin. Both have collaborated with the Wessex Institute in the past, including organising a Special Session on Time Domain Techniques at the International Conference on Computational Methods for the Solution of Electrical and Electromagnetic Engineering problems, which took place in Split, organised by the local university and WIT.

An interesting application was the ground penetrating Radar to detect underground objects or cavities. Similarly, electromagnetics can be used to detect brain tumours. The numerical tools developed by the University of Granada group are based on the Finite Difference Time Domain FDTD and the Alternating Direction Implicit (ADI) Solutions Algorithm. The advantages of ADI are that it is unconditionally stable and that the time increments are not restricted by the space mesh.

The Group also developed boundary integral techniques (Method of Moments) and hybrid methods combining FDTD and ADI. Their schemes are ideal for applying a combination of methods such as FDTD, Methods of Moments and Time Dependent Finite Elements. This approach is called the Hybrid Method.

The hybrid approach has resulted in stable results which allow for the detection of breast tumours for instance. The Group has optimised the set of antennas used for this application. The pre-processing of the results were the basis of a movie.

An interesting current project is to detect cracks in marble quarries to find the best blocks which has important industrial applications.

The techniques developed by the Group were also applied to design better broadband thin-wire antennas. This has been applied to many cases including the design of small antennas. These later designs were carried out using fractals.

The Granada researchers are also studying biological effects and in particular the absorption rates of the human head. They calculated the electric fields inside the head due to antennas located around the ears.

The lecture was very well received and there were numerous questions followed by a round table discussion to find out ways in which WIT could collaborate with the Group in Granada.